Accor group has secured the contract to have two more Pullman
properties in Vietnam, which will expand its portfolio of
properties in the country to five. The new editions are the
207-room Pullman Danang Beach and 300-room Pullman Hai Phong
Flamboyant Island Resort, which are slated to open in 2013.
Accor’s current properties in Vietnam are the 360-room
Pullman Vung Tau, 250-room Pullman Hanoi Horison and
290-room Pullman Saigon Centre.

Situated in central Wuxi, along an old canal that is to become
a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Hotel Nikko Wuxi is Nikko
Hotels International’s latest addition in the China market.
The hotel offers 499 guestrooms and three restaurants
serving different types of cuisines. Hotel Nikko Wuxi also
has the city’s largest ballroom at 6,400 square metres and
seven other meeting rooms to accommodate all types of
meetings and functions. The hotel is well-connected in terms
of transportation, being ten minutes’ drive away from Wuxi’s
railway stations and 25 minutes’ drive away from the Wuxi
International Airport.

The month of August has seen Asia Pacific-based airlines
continue to register strong growth in passenger demand, with
a 14.9% increase in the number of international passengers
for the first eight months of 2010. Preliminary figures
released by the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA)
showed that Asia Pacific-based airlines carried a total of
16.8 million international passengers in August, reflecting
a 12.4% increase compared to the same month in 2009. In
addition, international passenger traffic grew by 8.4% in
revenue passenger kilometre, indicating particularly strong
demand on regional short-haul routes.

Hilton Hotels and Resorts (Hilton) has once again been chosen as
the ‘Number 1 Hotel Brand’ in Japan, its fourth consecutive year
winning the title. This ranking is based on the annual Asia
Pacific Hotel Business Guest Survey conducted by UK-based
consultancy group BDRC. It takes into account factors such as a
hotel brand’s scores for prompted and unprompted awareness,
usage of a brand in the last 12 months and intention to
recommend the hotel to others. The survey took place in 14
countries across the Asia Pacific region, with 776 respondents
in Japan.

Developers in parts of India are pushing up property prices to
try to take advantage of a pick-up in the economy due to
rising wages and strong demand. For instance, builders in
Bangalore have increased prices by around 15% as they feel
that rising salaries, particularly from the information
technology sectors, will increase people’s spending power.
According to a report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch,
residential prices in Bangalore have increased by between
10% and 15% from the low prices seen in 2009. However,
property prices in the city are still well below the 2007
peak as compared against Mumbai and Delhi.

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